“I’m sho’ glad you come home, Sherry. Whyn’ you bring you’ wife?”
The slim fingers of one hand plucked at a button on the back of the baby’s dress. Her voice, raised and strengthened, sounded clear and hard.
“E wouldn’ come South, Joy. But I thought you had mo’ sense dan to go take Leah’s husband. You’d sleep in dat house fo’ Leah to hant you? You kin rest dere?”
Joy’s eyes flickered and shifted in a side-glance toward him, then beyond him, where trees fringing the rice-fields shimmered blue like trees in a dream.
“Sho’, I kin rest dere. April’s a fine man, Sherry. E treat me white too. I wish to Gawd e didn’ got sick. De crop has been a-needin’ him bad.”
“Whe’ e is now?” Sherry’s eyes were cloudy, his voice dull.
“To de horspital.”
The china-berry tree full of purple blossoms cast a pool of hot shade at Joy’s feet. Reddish scions, sprung up around the root of the crêpe myrtle, gave out a sickly scent as Sherry’s restless feet trampled and bruised them. The yellow afternoon glare stressed a stern look in his eyes and marked a swift-beating pulse that throbbed with tiny strokes in a vein of his thick strong neck.
It was a relief to hear Joy say coolly, “April’ll be glad you’s come. De boll-evil is swarmin’ in de cotton.”
And Sherry answered, “I’m glad to git back, Joy. Yonder up-North ain’ like home.”